SpaceX Rocket explodes minutes into space station mission

(Bloomberg) -- An unmanned Falcon 9 rocket from Elon Musk's SpaceX exploded within minutes after launch Sunday over the skies of Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The rocket, carrying its Dragon cargo spacecraft, supplies and equipment was destined for the International Space Station after the blastoff at 10:21 a.m. local time. The explosion occurred before the first stage was set to separate, a SpaceX spokesman said during a webcast on the company's website.

The cargo-hauler is the second straight vehicle to fail to deliver goods to the orbiting lab after a Russian spacecraft was destroyed last month. Another Progress capsule laden with supplies is slated to blast off from Kazakhstan July 3.

It is the second U.S. resupply mission to fail in less than a year, posing a setback for commercial spaceflight championed by Musk and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. An Antares rocket launched by Orbital ATK Inc. exploded in a fireball over a Virginia launchpad in October.

Sunday's attempt was the seventh mission under Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s $1.6 billion contract with NASA to resupply the space station. The Hawthorne, California-based company also has a second contract, valued at as much as $2.6 billion, to transport the first U.S. astronauts to the station since the space shuttle stopped flying in 2011.

Last month, SpaceX was certified by the U.S. Air Force to compete for military launches with United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp.

Musk, 44, founded SpaceX in 2002 with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets. Once considered a long-shot startup, the company has grown to almost 4,000 employees.